Thinking in Systems: A Primer

by Donella H. Meadows

If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves. . . . There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

A diverse system with multiple pathways and redundancies is more stable and less vulnerable to external shock than a uniform system with little diversity. — Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Obvious. Yet subversive. An old way of seeing. Yet somehow new. Comforting, in that the solutions are in our hands. Disturbing, because we must do things, or at least see things and think about things, in a different way.

Words and sentences must, by necessity, come only one at a time in linear, logical order. Systems happen all at once. They are connected not just in one direction, but in many directions simultaneously. To discuss them properly, it is necessary somehow to use a language that shares some of the same properties as the phenomena under discussion.

I don’t think the systems way of seeing is better than the reductionist way of thinking. I think it’s complementary, and therefore revealing. You can see some things through the lens of the human eye, other things through the lens of a microscope, others through the lens of a telescope, and still others through the lens of systems theory.

Growth in a constrained environment is very common, so common that systems thinkers call it the “limits-to-growth” archetype.

In physical, exponentially growing systems, there must be at least one reinforcing loop driving the growth and at least one balancing loop constraining the growth, because no physical system can grow forever in a finite environment.

equipment depreciates

Here is a new balancing feedback loop that ultimately will control the growth of capital: the more capital, the higher the extraction rate. The higher the extraction rate, the lower the resource stock. The lower the resource stock, the lower the yield of resource per unit of capital, so the lower the profit (with price assumed constant) and the lower the investment rate—therefore, the lower the rate of growth of capital. I could assume that resource depletion feeds back through operating cost as well as capital efficiency. In the real world it does both. In either case, the ensuing behavior pattern is the same—the classic dynamics of depletion (see

Systems thinking leads to another conclusion, however, waiting, shining, obvious, as soon as we stop being blinded by the illusion of control. It says that there is plenty to do, of a different sort of “doing.” The future can’t be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being. Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned. We can’t surge forward with certainty into a world of no surprises, but we can expect surprises and learn from them and even profit from them. We can’t impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone. We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!

Get the Beat of the System

Expose Your Mental Models to the Light of Day When we draw structural diagrams and then write equations,

Honor, Respect, and Distribute Information

Use Language with Care and Enrich It with Systems Concepts

Pay Attention to What Is Important, Not Just What Is Quantifiable

Make Feedback Policies for Feedback Systems

Go for the Good of the Whole

Listen to the Wisdom of the System

Locate Responsibility in the System

Stay Humble— Stay a Learner

The thing to do, when you don’t know, is not to bluff and not to freeze, but to learn. The way you learn is by experiment—or, as Buckminster Fuller put it, by trial and error, error, error. In a world of complex systems, it is not appropriate to charge forward with rigid, undeviating directives. “Stay the course” is only a good idea if you’re sure you’re on course. Pretending you’re in control even when you aren’t is a recipe not only for mistakes, but for not learning from mistakes. What’s appropriate when you’re learning is small steps, constant monitoring, and a willingness to change course as you find out more about where it’s leading.

Celebrate Complexity

Expand Time Horizons

The couplings between very fast processes and very slow ones are sometimes strong, sometimes weak. When the slow ones dominate, nothing seems to be happening; when the fast ones take over, things happen with breathtaking speed. Systems are always coupling and uncoupling the large and the small, the fast and the slow.

When you’re walking along a tricky, curving, unknown, surprising, obstacle-strewn path, you’d be a fool to keep your head down and look just at the next step in front of you. You’d be equally a fool just to peer far ahead and never notice what’s immediately under your feet. You need to be watching both the short and the long term—the whole system.

Defy the Disciplines

Seeing systems whole requires more than being “interdisciplinary,” if that word means, as it usually does, putting together people from different disciplines and letting them talk past each other. Interdisciplinary communication works only if there is a real problem to be solved, and if the representatives from the various disciplines are more committed to solving the problem than to being academically correct. They will have to go into learning mode. They will have to admit ignorance and be willing to be taught, by each other and by the system. It can be done. It’s very exciting when it happens.

Expand the Boundary of Caring